With the resurgence of the Graphics Interchange Format in its animated incarnation, the HOT debate about how to pronounce that gem of an acronym has also come to the front again. There are two fighters in the ring, here. One that is coached by the man most credited with bringing the GIF to the world, Steve Wilhite and his soft-G approach which is likened to the pronunciation of it as ‘jif’ as in Jif®™ brand peanut butter. The other fighter goes by the name of Vox Populi and hails from Parts Unknown, where his people pronounce GIF with a hard G.

By now you’ve probably heard an argument or two about how to say this now-household word, and you may have made up your mind how you are going to say it. If you’re with Steve Wilhite, keep an open mind during this essay. If you’re of the Vox Populi, tuck this in your back pocket to wave at the Wilhite Warriors. I propose that the proper way to say the acronym is with a hard-G.

The Historical Evidence

The phrase itself is an acronym of Graphics Interchange Format and was coined by people working at CompuServe, way back in 1987. That’s possibly the year that you were born. (Are you the Dancing Baby model?)

Often, Steve Wilhite is credited as being the inventor of the format, but he really isn’t. He may have come up with a novel way to apply the Lempel–Ziv–Welch (LZW) lossless data-compression algorithm to an image, but it merely builds on the LZW algorithm patented by Sperry Corporation¹, which merged into Burroughs Corporation, which then became Unisys. This was the 80’s when companies ate each other like sharks eating minnows. Then there was a whole mess about licensing the format, and some bizarre methods of licensing it were agreed upon between Unisys and CompuServe², and pretty much nobody else. But the fact remains, there is NO patent for the GIF as a format or specification, therefore there is no inventor, as such. Booya!

Speaking of specifications, which I am, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published the specifications for the main two versions of the format; GIF-87a³ and GIF-89a4. GIF-87a is the earlier of the two, and shows that the phrase ‘Graphic Interchange Format‘ and the acronym ‘GIF‘ were trademarked by CompuServe.

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It should be noted that the specifications are copyrighted by CompuServe as well. Unfortunately, you can’t really trademark the name of a intangible service – that requires a service mark as noted in the GIF-87a specification³. CompuServe DID actually register GIF as a service mark at one point, however that registration is now dead, because CompuServe, “…did not file an acceptable declaration under Section 8.”5. The specific combination of the letters G,I, and F as a name for something, is not copyrighted or registered!

Summary: GIF was never properly trademarked, service marked, or marked as territory by peeing on it. So, no one person or company can lay enough claim to the term to decide how the rest of the world will say GIF!

“Oh, so it wasn’t in the specifications. What does that matter, Guy?” you might scoff. Well, it seems that CompuServe was also the progenitor of the Portable Network Graphic, which they did take the pains to specify how the acronym should be pronounced in PNG’s specifications:

This International Standard specifies a datastream and an associated file format, Portable Network Graphics (PNG, pronounced “ping”), for a lossless, portable, compressed individual computer graphics image transmitted across the Internet.6

Wilwhite may well have intended for the format to be pronounced with the soft-G way back in the day, as he does today7. People often cite that CompuServe employees used the phrase, ‘Choosy developers choose GIF’, referencing the peanut butter, which may be true or false. If you only delve as deep as Steven Olsen’s, The GIF Pronunciation Page, you might think it is true, because there is a quote there saying, “The pronunciation of “GIF” is specified in the GIF specification to be “jif”…”8. Olsen references the Graphics File Formats FAQ9 as his proof that it was in the GIF specifications. Dude, it’s not³,4.

Either way, hasn’t this format had enough legal troubles without infringing on the trademark of a sandwich spread company? By misaligning the term with the trademarked name Jif®™, I propose that the infringement nullifies the justification of using the soft-G, simply because it fits in a stolen jingle.

Oh, there’s another CompuServe employee who wants to weigh in on this argument! Bob Berry, in an e-mail exchange with then Math Undergrad, Tim ‘Timmy’ Haynes, shows his response from Bob:

Tim,<br>

GIF has always been pronounced “jif”, since it was first released in 1987.<br>

Bob10

Oh yeah? And who the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks are you Bob? Okay, you had everything to do with CSHOW11, a pioneering program to work with GIFs and other images, but you still didn’t invent the GIF, did you Bob? Then you don’t get to decide what comes out of my mouth either. But you’re still cool for making that software.

Obviously, there is no real historical proof that it is soft-G GIF. In Your Face!

The Linguistic Evidence

With the absence of historical evidence rivaled only by my absences from high school, we must turn to the rules of the English language.

Our lingua franca as it were. The Mother Tongue. Our vulgar language bestowed upon us by a nation of shopkeepers and imperialists. Yeah, THAT English, tosser! (I’m sorry if that’s not a nice word, I’m Canadian. In fact, I apologize for this whole article if it offends you. It’s right, but I’m still sorry.)

Now follow closely, as it gets simple really quickly. GIF is an acronym, not an initialization12. What’s the difference? Both are made of the first letter of each word comprising the term. However, an initialization does not lend itself easily to being pronounced as a word. Instead, you enunciate each individual letter. Like in the terms CIA, or FBI, or NBC. You could try, but you might end up being forcibly medicated. Acronyms that lend themselves nicely to enunciation as a word include SCUBA, LOL, JPEG, PNG, oh…and GIF.

We agree? It’s an acronym? Cool, hang on.

Acronyms, being comprised of the first letter of the words comprising it, take the enunciation of the letter as it is in situ. Graphic starts with a hard-G. Got it? “Oh ho!”, you exclaim haughtily, “What about the P for Photograph? Isn’t that phonetically pronounced like an F?” Pffft. Go back and read the paragraph differentiating acronyms from initializations! And I quote:

However, an initialization does not lend itself easily to being pronounced as a word.13

JPhEG does not roll off the tongue like Jay-PEG does, does it? I say no! The Ph sound in this case does NOT lend itself easily to being pronounced as a word. I read a quote about that somewhere.

Not good enough for you? Let’s throw down on some phonetics and phonology then! Since there definitely is two generally accepted pronunciations of GIF, because if there wasn’t we wouldn’t be having this conversation, there is some variation. Since you’ll probably be understood using either variation, there is some freedom of choice here. And because the two ways of saying it sound sort of similar, they are allophones. So what do we have in the end? That’s right…a free variation allophone14

Oh, sorry, free variation allophone means either way of saying it is alright. As you were. Go do something important now. Maybe do something to help those poor people getting slobberknocked by tornadoes all over the US. Or sweatshop workers all over the east. Thanks for coming out.

So, Mr Guy, do you pronounce your name GHEE or GYE? And how would you feel if everyone decided that your pronunciation is wrong and called you by the other pronunciation?

The pronunciation of GIF has nothing to do with phonetics or the evolution of English pronunciations; it has to do with what the creators named and called their new baby ... and that baby was and will forever be called "JIF."

All this talk about JIF has made me hungry, so if you'll excuse me, I'm heading to the kitchen to make a PB&J (using Jif peanut butter, of course).

Do I pronounce my name GHEE or GYE? Assuming those are hard-Gs, yes. I pronounce it both ways, depending onthe audience I'm speaking with. If it's a Francophone audience, I use Ghee. If it's an Anglophone audience, I use Gye.

I have had people decide for me that they were going to call me Ghee. These were always Francophones who felt that, since Guy is a French name, it must be said the French way. Then I have to give them a little lesson on the etymology of the name. Guy is originally a Germanic name, meaning old soldier, old farmer, guide. As such it was pronounced more like the word wide, but with a v-sound at the beginning. And if their name is something like Pierre, I call them Pete, or Dick for Richard, and then the fight breaks out.

The only pronunciation I object to is Gooey. Yes, someone honestly thought it was Gooey, so I had to correct them. Oh, and Cameron. I don't know how they got Cameron out of Guy, but oh well.

The GIF is not a baby and it doesn't respond differently depending on how you say the acronym of its name. If any anthropomorphic parallels can really be drawn, then the acronym is more like a nickname.

I'm more of a Kraft Chunky Peanut Butter fan. But I'll eat PB regardless of its name. ;)

It's been a while since I've seen an author devoting this much time and energy to a completely uninteresting, utterly irrelevant, totally trivial trifle... This article is bordering to the absurd. Or wait, was it all meant as a joke, ridiculizing some techies' obsessedness with minute details? In that case, I've said nothing.

Great article, actually cracked me up a few times. Loved the arguments. I never knew there were different ways of saying it. Had always pronounced it as GIF. It was good to know it history and also about the definition of an acronym and initialization.....clearly I'm still learning English :)

Personally, I just pronounced each letter like they are in their respective word. Makes sense, I know that doesn't really present a great argument since by the logic the pronunciation of SCUBA would be all screwed up, but in a three character acronym I let it slide since it's the age old debate.

Funny, I haven't pronounced file extensions as if they were words (with the exception of DOC and JPG, the latter pronounced as JAY-peg). I've always pronounced them, and I'm pretty sure I've always heard them pronounced like this--as letters. PNG is the three letters P-N-G; RTF is always the three letters R-T-F.

This logic is about as faulty as it comes: " But the fact remains, there is NO patent for the GIF as a format or specification, therefore there is no inventor, as such. Booya!"

You don't have to receive a patent to be an inventor. No dictionary defines the word that way nor does the language of any patent statute of which I'm aware. Only inventions that are new, useful, and non-obvious are eligible to be patented.

People re-invent things all of the time. Are they inventions? Yes. Are they patent eligible? No.

I think what Guy brilliantly assessed is that English is a living language - and as such, we are free to modify it provided we follow a certain number of rules. Don't get me wrong, though, you also make a good point.

This situation is essentially identical to the pronunciation of aluminum, which is correctly pronounced by the British as "AL-YOU-MIN-EE-UHM". Of course we Americans say it the wrong way. "AHLOOH-MINUM", yet it became the accepted pronunciation due to widespread adoption.

With 20+ years of experience in IT, training, and technical trades, it is my desire to share what I've learned with anyone else willing to learn. I strive to do the best job possible in the best manner possible, and with a little humour. Keep in touch: Twitter - Facebook…